The Schiavo case is CRITICAL for the future of liberal progressivism [View All]

[GarySeven]

Everyone has been focused on red herrings in this case. The questions of whether she is "alive"; whether people have a right to die, or the others being debated on this board are actually a screen behind which hides the true motives of Conservatives.

Terri Schiavo is important to conservatives for one political reason: it enables them to advance their mission to abolish judicial review in this country. It is a goal they have been seeking for over 40 years and if they win it means the effective end of liberalism, even democracy, in this country.

Consider: In the 1960s, conservatives opposed federal legislation to end segregation. The federal laws were enacted over their strong objections. Conservative governors in conservative states refused to enforce the laws, which prompted legal challenges and eventual court orders that shattered the old social order under which conservatives had lived.

Following that civil rights victory, conservatives then saw other laws promoting equal treatment of minorities enacted. Legal challenges to these laws were swiftly defeated by the courts. Thus, those who opposed passage of these laws saw federal judges, in effect, enact them anyway. The frustration of conservative politicians to halt these progressive laws was turned against the judges. They began to complain of "activist" judges who "legislate from the bench." Thus, conservatives began to build the meme among their adherents that the legitimate check-and-balance function of the federal courts is something illegal - even threatening - to the legislative process.

Many legal challenges have framed social issues in which morality is a major part. The EFFECT of judicial rulings have enabled, for example, homosexuals to share benefits. In ruling on these matters, of course, the courts are not responding to the moral question; they are simply ruling on whether the body of precedent and the Constitution supports the rights of parties to do things over the moral objections of some others. These cases have been used by Conservatives to focus and refine their original "activist" judge meme: now instead of "legislating from the bench" judges are "advancing a specific agenda."

Indeed, it has come to the point that it is automatically assumed by many (even some on this board) that judges do not rule based on the law and precedent; they rule by their ideology and by the party affiliation of the politician who may have appointed them.

In this fashion, Conservatives have eroded faith in the judicial review process. By arguing that judges have no role in lawmaking - that judicial review is actually unwelcome and threatening - conservatives are actually engaged in a dangerous and in fact treasonous exercise: the usurpation of the separation of powers guaranteed by the Constitution.

Folks, they are seeking to OVERTHROW the Constitution and replace it with something else, something alien and un-American.

Things have now so advanced with the Conservative mission that they see judges as enemies of what they consider moral. To them, judges who rule women may abort fetuses are forcing America on an immoral road. Judges who allow people to die with dignity - despite their wishes to do so - are, to them, imposing a moral viewpoint at variance with their own. Now, it is argued that judges are pushing an "agenda of death."

This moral viewpoint has an important political consequence. To them, an individual has no individual rights. To conservatives, individuals belong to the larger society and society is subject to the moral will of the majority. If a majority of the people find your lifestyle or choices immoral, then you have no moral right to them. And when these moral ideologues have political power, you have no legal right to them, either.

Conservatives control the branches of government that are directly answerable to the electorate. They have gained this control through trickery and subterfuge. Their goal is to eliminate the only branch of government not capable of such control, by making the judiciary irrelevant and making judicial review of the laws they pass impossible.

The controversial nature of the Schiavo case, in which many people of good faith may have differing opinions, creates a variety of division, especially among liberals. They are counting on this and intend to exploit it.

Their goal is the abolition of the Constitution and substituting the rule of law with rule by self-appointed moralists. They can only achieve this goal as they have achieved their other goals: by misdirection and subterfuge. We must recognize that their real goal is to destroy the judiciary, either by occupying all judgeships or by making judicial review all but impossible. They want to change the nature of the government and subject us to rule by politicians over whom we have no control and no obligation to answer to us.